Make Your Mind a Judgement Free Zone

Make Your Mind a Judgement Free Zone... with Samia Bano

Ready to get off the #emotionalrollercoaster of life and master your #emotionalwellness?

In this episode Samia shares Key #2 to how we can remain calm and relax even in the face of adversity!

Note: Key #2 is to make your mind a #judgementfreezone, and one very critical aspect of mastering this key is that you #dontjudge situations and #dontjudgeothers even as GOOD! Be sure to listen all the way to the end of this episode to understand why it's so crucial for you to stop judging people and situations as #goodorbad.

To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

#judgementfree #nonjudgemental #nonjudgement #dontjudgewhatyoudontunderstand #PerspectiveShift #perspectivematters #positivemindset #spiritualwisdom #howtobehappy #makechangefunandeasy #makechangehappen #livejoyfully

Here's the audio version of this episode:

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Full Video Transcript

All right! Hello, Salam, Shalom, Aloha, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal! For those of you who might not know me, again my name is Samia Bano, and I am your Happiness Expert and author of the book, “Make Change Fun and Easy: How to Create Inner Peace to World Peace In 3 Simple Steps.”

Last week, I actually picked a specific quote and started to break it down to explore the different lessons that are embedded in that quote for us to learn about how to make change fun and easy, particularly in the context of remaining calm and relaxed even in the face of adversity. So let me tell you what the quote is again, all right? This is very important. So basically the quote says… it's a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and he says:

“Wondrous is the affair of the believer for there is good for them in every matter. And this is not the case with anyone except the believer. If they're happy, then they thank God and thus there is good for them. And if they are harmed, then they show patience and thus there is good for them.”

Okay so I'll read it once again. “Wondrous is the affair of the believer for there is good for them in every matter. And this is not the case with anyone except the believer. If they're happy, then they thank God and thus there is good for them. And if they are harmed, then they show patience and thus there is good for them.”

So last time I started to talk about how the saying is really teaching us many lessons. But the lesson that I highlighted last week was this idea that we really need to let go of our judgments of situations being good or bad, okay. It's really, really critical because as long as you're judging situations as bad, right, and you think a situation is bad, well, how can you feel calm and relaxed when you're in a situation that you judge to be bad, right? Also briefly mentioned in passing the idea that you should also actually not judge situations to be good. I think that one is a little counterintuitive as a notion so I want to spend some time today talking about why we shouldn't even judge situations to be good, okay…

Well, the simple answer is that, look, even if what you're doing is judging situations to be good, the fact is that you're still judging, right. You're still stuck in that cycle of judgmental thinking where things are either good or bad, right or wrong, you know. So the judgmental thinking perspective is by nature one that drives you to see situations in black and white, and you miss the opportunity to appreciate the shades of gray. And the fact is that no matter what the situation you're in is, there are sure to be shades of gray in it because life is more than black and white.

It's also a fact that because we're human we have a lot of limitations in terms of what we can understand, how far, how deeply, we can understand about any given situation. You know there's like limitations based on our age, based on our experience, based on our, you know, like, geography, like where do you live, a culture, you know, you've been born in and raised in... You know, like there's so many, so many factors that go into informing the different perspectives that you have. And these factors also limit your ability to see any situation from a completely holistic perspective. There are always the limits to what you can understand in a situation and about a situation. That's just how it is, you know. You can’t… even if you're really committed to examine any situation from as many different perspectives as you can, you know even then, even after your very best efforts, your understanding will still be limited. That's just part of the human condition.

Okay, so when you are making judgments, you are essentially making judgments based on incomplete information. Right? So even with your best efforts your judgments are based on incomplete information. Right? And so there's a lot of possibility of making mistakes and having inaccuracies in your judgment. So just let go. Like honestly, the best solution is, just let go of your need and your habit to be judging situations, right.

And so if you're not going to be judging situations, what are you going to do actually? Yes, that is a very important question. But I realized, let me give you a quick example before I answer that question. Let me give you a really quick example of how, you know, because of our human limitations, we can never judge a situation in a holistic way, you know. Okay so there I just shared with you a quote from the Prophet Muhammad, so let me share with you a story from the Quran. I'm not going to share the whole story, just a very small part of it, just to highlight this particular point about the limitations of our knowledge and how that affects our judgments, okay?

So there's this story about Prophet Moses in the Quran where Prophet Moses, you know, he actually makes a claim… There were like a bunch of people who were challenging his authority, and they were really bothering him, you know, and he lost patience with them. And he was like, look I'm the Prophet of God and I know more than you do. I know everything there is to know. And so just listen to what I'm saying. I'm paraphrasing, okay, but he said something to that effect to the people to sort of shut them up in the moment. And after he said that, God, you know, revealed to him that, hey Moses you shouldn't have said that, you shouldn't have said that. Well, you know, because it's not true. It's not true… Plus, you know, it's a little arrogant, and it's not nice to have arrogance in your attitude. But the bigger point that was highlighted in the story, throughout the story, was that it's not even true that you know everything. And so basically then God sends Moses on a quest, okay. And He says, go find this other being or person that actually God has granted even more wisdom to than you have, and so go find this person and say, ask them to teach you, and you know, so you can learn more wisdom.

So Moses goes… goes on a quest and eventually, you know, he finds this person, and he says, okay, please teach me, let me come along with you on your journey… and allow me to observe what you do, how you do it, so I can learn from you. And Moses is warned. Like, this person or being, warns Moses that it will not be easy for you Moses to follow me. You will not be able to have patience with me because you will see me doing things that you will not be able to understand, and you won't have patience with me. So, you know, it may be better if you just don't come...

But Moses was like no, no, no. I want to come. I'll be able to be patient. And so with that intention Moses, you know, joins this person on the journey. And so a number of things happen. Like, there's three distinct instances that occur when Moses is accompanying the person. And I won't get into all those three instances because then the story will get really long, but in one of the instances, what happens is that they meet a couple. And this couple has just one son and this one son is killed. Okay, so Moses is very sad and upset that this couple's one and only son has been killed. Now there's more to how this person gets killed. But I don't want to get into that, right, because I don't want to be delving into all the other lessons and complications of the story. So just this fact that there's this couple, they have only one son, and the son dies and Moses finds it difficult to be patient in that situation. He's like why, why does this son have to die? Why does he get killed?

So later on in the story, you know, we find out… God reveals to Moses that the reason that the son was killed is because God… because God is all-knowing, right… God knows the present, God knows the past, God knows the future. God is not constrained by limitations of time. So God knows… knew that if this son was to have continued living then he would have become a very unrighteous, bad person, committed a lot of bad, evil acts. And it would have caused a lot of trauma and suffering for his parents. And the parents of this, of the son, they were very righteous people. They were very excellent and good people and God did not want these people to suffer because of the evil actions of their son, you know. And so God decided to get/have the son die when the son died. And then God also willed and decreed that this couple should bear another child and that this child, the second child that they will bear, that child will grow up to be a good person who will love and respect his parents and be a comfort to them, and you know, spread good in their life, right.

And so once Moses understood this, right, this information was revealed to Moses, now I see the wisdom, like, now I can be patient in this scenario and experience patience in this scenario. But when he didn't have all the information he found it very difficult to be patient in this situation, right. And that is the case with all of us, that when we are lacking the full picture, the full information, about any situation, then it's very, very difficult for us to be patient in it, or to practice gratitude in that situation.

But when we fail to practice patience and gratitude in any given situation then we cannot be calm and relaxed, let alone happy and peaceful in the situation, true or true? Yeah, so even though it's very difficult, even though it can be very, very challenging for us to practice gratitude and patience in the face of adversity, to remain calm and relaxed in the face of adversity, it can nonetheless be done. It can nonetheless be done. And that's what we are being encouraged to strive for through the example of Prophet Moses in this story. If I, you know, or in the saying that I quoted for you in the first place, by the Prophet Muhammad that, you know, when you understand, when you know, when you, at the very least, are willing to accept the reality that, you know what, in any given situation your knowledge will always be incomplete. You know that. You know that is a fact, and that will never change as long as you remain human, right? So then why struggle with that, you know? Why struggle with that? Why not figure out a way to make peace with this… with this fact of life, you know?

And so the way we make peace with this situation is we say, yes, okay, I don't know. In any given situation there will be a lot that I don't know. And so the judgment, any judgment I make, whether it's that the situation is good or whether that the situation is bad, this judgment is based on incomplete information. There's a high, high possibility that, you know, that judgment is inaccurate in some way or another. So let me just accept the situation as it is. Be like, whatever the situation is, it is what it is. You just accept it as what it is, and then strive to do your best to practice patience and gratitude in that situation.

So next time I will dive more deeply into how you actually practice patience and gratitude in this kind of difficult situation. Because even though it's difficult, it is possible, okay? And so we'll get into that next time. But for now remember -- give up, give up judging situations as good or bad. Even give up judging situations as good because you don't want to stay stuck in judgmental thinking. You want to get yourself out of judgmental thinking entirely, okay? All right!